


four views of paradise

by maelidify



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, but other stuff too, here thar be smut, john murphy thinks about the world in lowercase letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 14:12:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3695324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maelidify/pseuds/maelidify
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, that time John Murphy decided to grow the fuck up a little. College AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	four views of paradise

i. dawn  
-see her. that’s all it takes-- see her and it’s like your life flashing before your eyes. she’s like death, but in a cool way. 

-she turns around, looks at you. a flash of something warm in her eyes, an unanswered question, and she turns back. but you’re gone already. you’re beyond gone. 

-(your tongue feels like sand, which is new. a novelty. you’re used to letting your words roll out of your mouth, letting them bulldoze everyone around you. you use your words as a self-harm tool because why not see how much you can get everyone to hate you? 

the thing is, you can never get yourself to hate you like you deserve. self-preserving to the end. 

still, the words don’t come.

she’s sitting in front of you at an 8:00 am class and the professor is lecturing so maybe it’s good that the words don’t come.)

-this is what she looks like: a razor, a sunrise, a rattlesnake. you see her from the side and she squints up at the professor, yawns, all liquid brown eyes and easy strength. she looks strong. she looks like she could take you. 

one of her hands is wacked out. she wears long sleeves but you can see that the fingers are long, tapered, too long, welded together like pincers. people give her uneasy looks. you want her to take that wacked out, welded hand, if she can, and flip them off. 

-you wonder what her flesh would feel like on yours. 

ii. post-meridian  
-she punches you one day, and you’re absofuckinglutely done for. 

-it goes like this: you walk past starbucks, 11:30 am, and she’s sitting in a window-chair, one of her feet up on a table. she’s sleeping. 

-let’s get one thing straight: you hate starbucks. 

-you’re broke. you have no money. this is literally the only reason why you hate starbucks but it’s with such a burning passion that you’ve legitimately vandalized the building on occasion. 

-let’s say you’re bitter. 

-you step inside and there she is, soft light on her hair. is it brown or black? who fucking cares?

-you. you do. 

-she snores a little, because she obviously doesn’t give a fuck. it’s a beautiful thing. you sit down across from her and note how her outfit is put together with safety pins, how there are braids and tangles in her hair, how a blue tattoo stretches faintly across her cheekbones. 

-and the rise and fall of her breasts, you note that too. 

-you reach out to touch her hair and her eyes snap open like subway doors and you’re on the floor suddenly your nose burning in a slow sting, your hair stuck in your eyes and your head hurting in the best of ways, like it’s splitting open, like it’s sinking to your heart and chest and cock all at once.

-”sorry. i guess i deserved that,” you say because there’s nothing truer. 

“it’s a reflex,” she says and you wonder why, why she has that specific reflex. “but what the hell did you think you were doing,” she adds, for good measure, looking at you like you’re a math problem (half of it is true). 

you think, i fucked it up. the one person on the entire planet i don’t actually want to stab and already she hates me. you had one job, murphy. 

“being a fucking idiot,” you say and she smiles now, a wrinkle on her lips, a dimple on her chin. and you smile too. it feels warm and cold and unusual, like eating a star. “you were sleeping,” you bullshit, “just trying to make sure you’re not missing a class.” 

she says, “don’t i know you?” 

“8:00, stats,” you say. you’re the most interesting part of stats, you don’t say. 

“stats,” she echoes. then she reaches down with her non-interesting hand and pulls you off the ground. “you’re bleeding,” she informs you. 

“you don’t say.”

she doesn’t apologize. 

iii. twilight

-it’s three weeks later and she lets you come over to study for a test. 

-it’s an apartment, not a dorm. she lives alone, a door in an alley wall in town, a flight of stairs above the pizza place. sink and microwave, tapestries on the walls, a decent bed and a homemade quilt. it isn’t bad, and you collapse on the bed straightaway before asking her, before asking yourself. before taking off your shoes. 

-she gives you that smile again, the one that breaks you. “you’re tired,” she comments, which, no shit sherlock. 

”’don’t get much sleep,” you allow, mumbling it into the pillow. 

”and why’s that?” 

“i’m a shitty human being,” you say. she laughs and you roll over, staring up at her ceiling, the crevices and cracks of it. “no,” you say, “i am.” 

“right.”

“i didn’t want to tell you.” because you’re crazy and beautiful and better than i deserve, you think. “because you’re decent to me,” you say. “but it’s the truth.” 

“mhm,” she says and sits down next to you, ass on the pillow, her lap next to your face, legs crossed. “we’re none of us perfect, john.” 

she’s the only person who calls you by your first name. “okay,” you say, sitting up, shoulder to shoulder, “say you take perfect. say perfect’s made of glass, okay, and you take it and smash it with a hammer. you get me, except better. that’s how much i suck.” 

she stops smiling. “go on,” she says.

you don’t want to give her any sob stories, but you also don’t want to give her the juvy stories and all the reasons she should throw you out of her apartment by the hair (not that you wouldn’t enjoy that). “i may have, possibly, killed a guy,” you say. innocuously. 

she pauses. “liar.” 

“it was an almost thing.” 

“so you didn’t kill a guy.”

“i tried.” 

“why?” 

why not? “tried to kill me,” you say. “for something i didn’t do.” 

she nods. then she looks you in the eyes like a tidal wave. then she grabs your hair in her right fist, tight, too tight. 

“i don’t think you know what a blank slate is,” she says, almost calm, “but you should learn. you have a choice, you can rebuild who you goddamn are. instead, you hate yourself.” 

“not as--”

“shut up.” a sharper tug and the words are now a hiss. “i can tell, every time i look at you and you’re feeding into it, making yourself worse, making yourself uglier. some people don’t have a choice, but you do. you’re pathetic.” 

your hair is in a vice grip. so, honestly, is the rest of you. you stare into her angry face and take her hand in both of yours, the wacked out one. her grip tightens, but she lets you lift it to your mouth, lets you place a kiss on the end of one of her fingers. 

“what are you doing?” she asks, but there’s no bite to it. something darker, maybe.

“if this is what you’re talking about, it isn’t ugly. kinda badass, actually.” 

“liar,” she says again. she’s not ashamed of her hand, you realize, but she’s weary of the space she receives because of it. that’s what the darkness in her voice is. it’s weariness. 

“try me,” you say, voice strained, and try to lean forward to kiss her. you can’t; her grip on your hair is too strong. it is pathetic, you realize, how desperate you are to taste her, and you laugh bitterly. 

“come on,” you say again. “try me.” are you pleading? maybe. she looks at you, all calculating, all snake eyes, math problem eyes, and she is kissing you tentatively, and then she is kissing you harshly. 

(she lets go of your hair, you collapse backwards, she climbs on top of you. she smells like cinnamon and sweat, tastes like salt and things soaring through dry air. you stutter against her lips but then catch up. bite her lips like a rose, groan when she groans. caress her face and thrust harshly upwards. 

“fuck,” she says against your mouth, and it’s the only time you’ve heard that particular expletive from her lips, and it only makes you harder. you try to flip the pair of you over but she grasps your throat lightly, says “no”. 

you laugh again and lean up to kiss her neck, light and hard and harder. run your hand down her hand, and then down her hip, and down her thigh. the crevice where she splits. she gasps again and pushes you down, grasps your wrist and holds it above your head. 

“you’re wet,” you say, because she is. it’s obvious even though her leggings. she smiles gently at the words and grinds against you. 

“am i,” she murmurs, soft and hard, so soft and hard. 

“yeah, pretty sure,” you breathe, even though breathing is difficult right now. you thrust up again. how much longer will you last? 

“our clothes stay on,” she says. 

“kay,” you say because you’re not fucking arguing with anything she says right now. she could say she was a power ranger and you’d be like “sure, just fuck me already.” 

she unzips you too slowly, almost clumsy. your breath catches; she has released your hand but you keep it above your head, thoroughly okay with the submission, and you squeeze it into a tense fist. 

she takes you in both her hands, cradling you like a secret. one hand is soft and one is rough and you’re damned if you know which is which. “shit,” you say through gritted teeth, “come on. have some fucking mercy.” 

she laughs outright at that, lets go, breaks her nudity clause, at least a little. she scrambles out of one leg of her leggings and pushes her underwear aside, sitting on you with a short rush of voice and warmth and air, her air or yours, you don’t know, you don’t care--

you move your hands finally, gripping her hips hard, one bare and one not. her skin is searing.“emori,” you hiss and she tightens her muscles around you, punishing, almost. a warning. 

the thrusts are messy and irregular at first, but you find the rhythm, the pattern, the symmetry of breath, the asymmetry of bodies, hisses and groans and laughs. she grabs your hair again at one point and you whisper “yes” and she makes you say it louder, and louder still. 

she comes around you and it’s too much and you pull out, curl to the side, finish into her blankets. she settles around you, chin on your shoulder. 

a huff of warm air in your ear. “i made that, you know.” 

“what?”

“that blanket.” 

“the one i jizzed into? congrats,” you say, “i’ve contributed.” 

and she smiles against the fabric of your shirt.) 

-you stay the night. you don’t have sex again, but she falls asleep on your shoulder, and you let her. you can’t see her, curled the way you are, but you can feel her, and she feels like the sun. 

-what can you say? neither of you study.

iv. dusk  
-neither of you have had proper dates ever, you realize. 

-her experience with men is that of distrust (her) and disrespect (them). you don’t ask why, what has happened in her life-- there’s a brick wall over that information. 

-your experience with women usually involves medication or inebriation, usual perception-altering shit. but you don’t want to alter anything right now. 

-this is new and the idea of going on a date with her feels like being chased by a pack of wild animals, but in a good way. 

-this is your date: you meet after your nighttime astronomy class, right when the light in the sky is mixing with unrelenting black. the stars are like gems and you’re waxing fucking poetic in your head and you’re going to take a walk, just that, just a walk. 

-”you look like you need a bath,” she says, finding you slunk against the astronomy building, your meeting spot. there’s a perfect view of the stars here. 

“you offering?” you quip and she wacks you on the shoulder with a smile, the roadmap of her face, perfect slopes and panes. it’s easy. this is easy. 

she always looks beautiful, but you should point it out. “you look good,” you say. “better than good. kinda want to eat you out, is what i’m saying here.” 

“you have the soul of a poet, john.” 

“damn right i do,” you say. you lock both her hands in yours, a little difficult with her right and her left, and her fingers tighten. 

“i don’t want to say i’m trying for you,” you say. 

“trying what?” 

“to not hate me.” cough, start again, lean against the wall and take her with you. “but i am. trying for you, i mean. it’s kinda bullshit, but it’s true.” 

she considers this, rubbing her thumb on your knuckle. 

“it isn’t perfect, if you’re doing it for me,” she comments. 

“nothing is.” 

and she looks at you and nothing is brighter than the way her dark eyes gleam, and the north star above, and her hair still tangled, a nest, and it makes you think of blankets and trees and everything at once. 

“you’re right,” she says. “and it’s a start.” 

you’re not sure if she’s right. you’re not sure whether it’s a start or a finish, and you’re not sure if you begin with her or if she ends with you, but this, this the closest thing to perfect you’ve ever tasted and you’ll choke on it if you have to.

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is in-universe with Float Like a Butterfly-- probably a year earlier? Unless I decide to make these events coincide. We'll see.


End file.
